Huawei's P40 series is another flagship that was published online due to the epidemic, but it does not detract from the wonderful content of the mobile phone. Even without GMS, whether it will be listed in Taiwan will have to wait for further news, but the P40 series still contains some very worthwhile. The functions discussed, of course, are mainly the cameras, so here we will look at the cameras of the P40 series regardless of the others (the editor is self-willed).

Basic information first.

The P40 series has released three models: P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro+, all three are equipped with Kirin 990 processor, 8GB RAM, and all are 5G mobile phones. However, the screen size, built-in capacity, power, camera configuration, etc. are not the same. The official website of the BC449A English version can compare the specifications. If you want to know more, you can click to open a new page.

The appearance of the three models, just looking at the photos, the P40 Pro and Pro+ are both 6.58-inch four-curved screens, and it is difficult to distinguish from the front, but if you actually see the material and color, it is easy to distinguish, because the P40 Pro has five colors, and The P40 Pro+ is made of ceramic and only available in pure black and white. And it can also be distinguished from the number of cameras.

The P40 is easy to recognize. First of all, its screen is 6.1 inches, which is relatively small, and it is a flat screen. In addition, it is equipped with three lenses.

During the warm-up, Huawei used the title of "Full-time Ultra-clear". Looking at the meaning of this sentence, it not only means that it is ultra-clear under the light of day and night, but also talks about various distances, as well as shooting dynamic and static pictures. .

In terms of hardware configuration, the P40 has three lenses, the P40 Pro has four lenses, and the P40 Pro+ has five lenses.

1. Ultra Vision Sensor: outsole photosensitive element

The main lens also uses RYYB sensor, the light input is 40% higher than that of the RGB array Sensor, and the area is larger, all of which are 1/1.28 inch (P30 Pro is 1/1.7 inch), the larger the bottom, the larger the amount of light. According to Huawei's comparison, the main lens of the P40 series receives 1 times more light than the iPhone 11 Pro Max.

However, the main camera's pixel area is also higher. When it reaches 50 million, the press conference did not mention how big the unit pixel area is. However, after combining 4-in-1 pixels, the unit pixel area can also reach 2.44 microns. Presumably the automatic mode is like this. Pixel shooting.

What's more special is that the P40 Pro and P40 Pro+ also support 16-in-1 pixel technology, using a 4-in-1 pixel array to do 4-in-1 merging, so that the pixel area reaches 4.48 microns, and the static ISO can be up to 409600.

2. Optical zoom to 10 times

The P40 series all have zoom lenses with a basic 3x optical take-off. The P40 Pro+ is also equipped with two telephoto lenses, one optical 3x for mid-range shooting, and the other periscope design, up to 10x optical zoom for long-distance shooting distance.

The flagship telephoto that I see now can shoot the available 10x hybrid zoom, which is pretty good. The P40 Pro+ directly gives 10x optics, which is a great feature, and with this optical 10x as the base, it can shoot up to 20x hybrid zoom zoom, and up to 100x zoom. At the press conference, there was a 100x zoom comparison with the S20 Ultra (above), and the clarity was significantly better. (I also found that the two colors are very different~)

This 10x periscope lens also supports dual-axis OIS (the 3x lens is also available). In addition, the size of the P40 Pro+ is 158.2 x 72.6 x 9mm, which is not too exaggerated. It was mentioned at the press conference that in order to compress this 10x lens In addition to the periscope lens design, the light is reflected 5 times in the lens module.

Personally, I am looking forward to its performance in video. At the press conference, there was a wild animal film shot by the P40 series that looked like a documentary. It is usually impossible for people to shoot close to the lion. From the film, it must be useful to zoom video, so I'm curious how 10x recordings perform in real life. (If it doesn't start from the specified time, you can drag it to 1:11:02 to start watching the wildlife documentary)

In addition, the 5x optical zoom lens of the P40 Pro, like the P30 Pro, is also a periscope design, featuring the use of RYYB photosensitive elements. I don’t know how much this can make up for the shortcoming of the small aperture of the telephoto lens, and whether it can be used in light. The darker places were also shot with a 5x lens?

3. Octa-core PD focusing helps low-light focusing speed

Another new thing is that the P40 series uses a full-pixel 8-core focus. I haven't seen any technical explanation yet. Looking at the picture, it looks like a four-in-one dual-pixel PDAF, which has a larger area for phase detection, and claims to have a faster focusing speed in low light.

4. Multi-spectral color temperature sensor makes white balance more accurate

This claims to be able to shoot more accurate colors. The entire P40 series uses a new "multi-spectral color temperature sensor" that supports 8-channel color temperature detection (placed next to the fill light). The main purpose is to allow the mobile phone to judge the accurate white balance under complex light sources. There is also an AI automatic white balance calculation, which can distinguish the environment and characters for subdivision. It seems that even if the background color is strong and bright, you can also A correct adjustment for the skin color of the character... I don't know if it can improve the problem of cold white balance in low light...

5. Standalone XD Fusion graphics engine

A new "XD Fusion image Enging" is also mentioned on the camera. With the Kirin 990's fifth-generation ISP and NPU performance, it can quickly process and synthesize multiple frames shot by multiple cameras at the same time, including analyzing scenes, people's skin tones, faces Parts and other feature points, do pixel-level processing, optimize HDR effect, detail sharpness, color tone, bokeh, etc. (This kinda reminds me of the Pixel Visual Core on Pixel phones...)

6. The usefulness of AI in the camera is more and more specific

In fact, the above calculation of image quality is indispensable for AI calculation, but the effect of AI may not be so strong in general photography. But this time the "Golden Snap" mode built into the P40 series. It is a function that can actually feel the AI calculation.

Golden Snap provides three functions: optimal dynamics, removal of passers-by, and de-reflection. (Sounds like there is no practical fu...)

Best Motion is when shooting people in motion, it shoots a motion picture and automatically recommends 3 photos of the best moments from it. This function sounds like many mobile phones have it... But according to the introduction, it will detect the posture and expression when shooting people in action, so AI will refer to the best posture and best expression to recommend photos, not It is only recommended based on image parameters such as brightness, sharpness, etc. The recommendation focuses on the presence of human expressions and movements. The system will identify and analyze more than 90 kinds of expressions, and more than 30 kinds of best postures to make recommendations...I don't know what the actual effect is....

7. Cinema Camera

The movie camera was also emphasized in the Mate30 Pro, that is, there are a number of advanced and fancy video recording functions, so that the mobile phone can shoot better quality videos.

The 40-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens of the P40 Pro and Pro+ still has such capabilities, including the ability to shoot 4K HDR+, 4K@60fps, 7680fps ultra-slow motion, dual-lens dual-screen simultaneous recording, real-time depth-of-field recording, and low-light recording. 51200 -ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200- ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/ " title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title ="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title="51200 model">51200-ic/" title=" Model 51200">51200-ic/" title="Model 51200">51200-ic/" title="Model 51200">51200...etc, and, of course, new additions.

The new parts include telephoto recording, zoom radio (there are three microphones on the body, which can be pointed to the radio, zoom in the video, and the voice of the protagonist will become louder), 4K time-lapse, and the picture will be better when recording in low light. .

Video recording with a telephoto lens in low light is still very challenging for mobile phones. This time, the two P40 Pros proposed that they can shoot clear videos in any light. The reasons are: large photosensitive elements and 16-in-1 pixel technology , 5x, 10x optical zoom lens, telephoto lens with dual-axis OIS (and with AIS), ISO51200, etc., these conditions are combined to allow users to shoot long-distance, Well-composed footage, including low light.

The example given this time is that the moon can be recorded.... However, the moon is actually very bright. The difficulty of shooting the moon should be that the contrast between light and dark is very high (the moon is very bright and the night sky is very dark). I don’t know how the dynamic range performance will be in actual recording. ...

This time, more emphasis is placed on the zoom lens, and the dual-lens video recording function is more useful. The P40s also support video recording with wide-angle and telephoto lenses at the same time. One mirror is used for one side, wide-angle captures the whole picture, and zoom captures details, all on one screen at the same time.

In addition, the front camera has 32 million pixels and can also shoot 4K@60fps videos (all three), and the resolution of self-video videos has reached a level~ (but girls may be more concerned about whether they can add beauty when shooting 4K...) .

On the whole, the P40 series has seized several upgrades that are practical for camera usage and experience. Basically, the direction is correct, including increasing the optical zoom factor, increasing the size of the photosensitive element, larger pixel merging area, and calculation. Power improvement, more application of multiple lenses and multiple shots to create new functions... etc. I feel that the direction is correct because these are not upgrades of tidbits, but upgrades of skill, which are very practical. The camera functions I have seen so far feel quite good, I hope the calculation quality of the finished product, color correction, etc. will not go wrong....